ountain View elementary and middle
schools are taking on
more students this year and
adding to their course offerings, and the local high school
district is remaining about the
same size but expanding the

number of classes they offer,
officials from both districts
said.
According to superintendents
Barry Groves of the Mountain
View-Los Altos Union High
School District and Craig Goldman of the Mountain View
Whisman School District, each
of their respective districts is

prepared for a growing student
body, even as they have been
forced to make difficult cuts in
recent years.
However, a week into the
school year, the Mountain
View-Los Altos district had yet
to exceed the number of stuSee BACK TO SCHOOL, page 11

welve years after it first
opened its doors on Rengstorff Avenue, the Girls’
Middle School is moving from
Mountain View to a new location
Palo Alto.
The need to expand drove the
decision to move, but there are

INSIDE

other contributing factors, said
Deb Hof, head of the school.
The Girls’ Middle School plans
to double the size of the student
body over the next couple of
years, Hof said.
Last year, the school had to
shutter its woodshop program
after the Mountain View Fire
Department informed the Girls’

Middle School that the “shed”
the shop was operating out of
wasn’t up to code.
Hof said that the move from
180 N. Rengstorff Ave. in Mountain View to 3400 W. Bayshore
Road in Palo Alto will see
the reinstitution of woodshop
See GIRLS SCHOOL, page 9

GOINGS ON 36 | MARKETPLACE 37 | MOVIES 35 | REAL ESTATE 39

new investigation into the
2004 shooting death of
17-year-old Alejandro “Alex”
Fernandez has led to the arrest
of two main suspects, the alleged
driver and shooter. The father of
the driver, a city employee, was also
arrested for allegedly lying under
oath in front of a grand jury.
The arrests were made thanks
to an FBI-organized task force
working out of the Mountain View
police department which re-interviewed dozens of witnesses when
the case was reopened last year.
Major breaks in the case came with
the help of something police say is
rarely used in Santa Clara County
— a grand jury investigation —
something more commonly used
by the FBI. Witnesses who refused
to talk to police in the past were
subpoenaed and successfully made
to testify under oath in front of the
grand jury with the threat of perjury charges hanging over them.
“We always felt like people weren’t
giving us information they had,”
said police spokeswoman Elizabeth
Wylie.
Fernandez was fatally shot while
walking down Rengstorff Avenue
near Latham Street on Sept. 24,
2004 with his friends. Wylie said
Fernandez, a junior at Los Altos
High School who had told police
he was a Sureño gang member,
approached the car and was allegedly shot multiple times in the
torso by 24-year-old Mountain
View resident Giovanni Duarte,
a self-admitted member of the
rival Norteño gang called “Varrio
Mountain View,” or “VMV,” Wylie
said. He was 17 at the time.
“We think the motive was gangrelated but a random act of gang
violence,” that did not specifically

target Fernandez, Wylie said.
Police quietly
arrested Duarte
March 23 and
he is being held
without bail. He
faces 50 years to Anthony
life in prison on Figueroa
charges of gangrelated murder.
And police
arrested Mountain View resident Anthony
Figueroa, 23,
at his Leong Arthur
Drive home on Figueroa
Friday for allegedly driving his
family’s car to
enable the driveby-sho ot i ng.
Figueroa, another member of the
VMV gang, also Giovanni
faces 50 years to Duarte
life in prison for
gang murder charges, said Frank
Carruba, a deputy district attorney
for Santa Clara County.
Also arrested Friday was
Figueroa’s father, Arthur Figueroa,
49, a parks maintenance worker
for the city of Mountain View
whom police believe has ties to the
VMV gang. Carruba said Arthur
Figueroa “lied regarding contact
and conversations with murder
suspect Marlan Ruiz pertaining to
grand jury proceedings.” Because
of a gang enhancement and a prior
strike on his record, Figueroa faces
up to 17 years in prison instead of a
maximum of four years for perjury,
Carruba said.
Arthur Figeroa was arrested
while riding as a passenger in a
See COLD CASE, page 13

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“On a whole, I think there should
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because primarily the housing
here is a little higher than the
other cities around.”
Dominic Cabacungan,
Mountain View

“I do think Mountain View could
use some more affordable housing.
I know there are a lot of young
people in Mountain View and a
lot of people looking for a place to
live. It would make the downtown
scene a little bit more active.”

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“I think there should be more
affordable housing because we
have really good schools and a
nice community, so lots of people
should be able to live here. But at
the same time, my family is about
to move, so I kinda want the market prices to go up so we can get
money on our house.”

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Ramon Arizmendi, Mountain View

$
“I think it’s an oxymoron. Unless
we start building high-rises, like in
Manhattan, there’s just a limited
amount of land.”